Chapter Kenno to Kex of K by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

partake thereof in gipsy fashion. Some think the discomfort of this sort of pic-nic gave rise to the phrase “A pretty kettle of fish.” (See Kittle Of Fish.)

“The whole company go to the waterside today to eat a kettle of fish.”- Sir Walter Scott: St. Ronan's Well, xii.

Kettledrum A large social party, originally applied to a military party in India, where drum- heads served for tables. On Tweedside it signifies a “social party,” met together to take tea from the same tea-kettle. (See Drum, Hurricane.)
   Kettledrum, a drum in the shape of a kiddle or fish-basket.

Kettledrummle (Gabriel.) A Covenanter preacher in Sir Walter Scott's Old Mortality.

Kevin (St.), like St. Senanus (q.v.), retired to an island where he vowed no woman should ever land. Kathleen loved the saint, and tracked him to his retirement, but the saint hurled her from a rock. Kathleen died, but her ghost rose smiling from the tide, and never left the place while the saint lived. A bed in the rock at Glendalough (Wicklow) is shown as the bed of St. Kevin. Thomas Moore has a poem on this tradition. (Irish Melodies, iv.)

Kex hemlock. Tennyson says in The Princess, “Though the rough kex break the starred mosaic,” though weeds break the pavement. Nothing breaks a pavement like the growth of grass or lichen through it. (Welsh, cecys, hemlock; French, ciguë; Latin, cicuta.)